Primary Education News

Ofsted has published a report showing that private schools continue to dominate sport at the elite levelA report published last week by the education watchdog, Ofsted, looking at the standards of competitive sport at school, claimed that private schools continue to dominate at elite level. Chief sport correspondent Owen Gibson wrote:Despite fewer than one in 10 pupils attending fee-paying schools, more than four in 10 of the British athletes who won medals at London 2012 were schooled privately. Alongside the success of state-educated athletes including Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford and cyclist Victoria Pendleton, half the gold medal winners were educated privately, including cyclist Chris Hoy and sailor Ben AinslieDespite state schools educating 8693% of the population, based on the data we collected, they only produce about two thirds of elite sportspeople across a range of disciplinesThe state schools are urged to have the same commitment and give sport as high a priority. Then, they are told, their children could have "the same opportunities to excel as those in the independent sector". This is a fantasy, certainly in the Olympic pursuits of rowing, sailing, equestrianism and the triathlon, but also in mainstream sports such as cricket, squash and tennis, which most pupils will never have the opportunity to try at any level of quality in state schools. In Ofsted's summaries of the independent schools they visited, there is no mention of the fees or facilities, let alone a properly researched picture of the financial realities Continue reading...